cell to string to date time

I am importing a time from a .txt file. The import was auto-generated by matlab. The timestamp array is in this form: '2015-08-07 13:12:00' The variable is a 100x1 cell...I am not sure how to get the cell to a usable date time. Thank you.

...I can also import from the auto-generated import, however the import format does not match any of the available formats.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

datenum(TheCell)

to return the older serial datenum objects.

datetime(TheCell)

to return the newer datetime objects.

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

Samantha, it sounds like you have code that you generated using the Import Tool. When you import a text file using the IT, you can specify that a particular column is datetime strings, and even specify a custom format for the strings. I cooked up a file with one column of numbers and one column of datetime strings, and the code I generated contains a line like

   formatSpec = '%f%{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss}D%[^\n\r]';

That script/function will import that column as a datetime array. It's not clear if that's what you're looking to do.